Attorney General Van Hollen—Corrupt and Clueless

"Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today that the Department of Justice will appeal the decision issued yesterday in NAACP v. Walker, et al., Dane County Case No. 11-CV-5492. Yesterday afternoon, the Honorable David T. Flanagan issued his decision invalidating and permanently enjoining Wisconsin’s Voter ID law."

So reads the news from Van Hollen's office. No great surprise.

Van Hollen persists in appealing a decision based on the Wisconsin constitution's expansive declaration of voters' rights by stating that a 2008 federal case in Indiana—in which no social scientific evidence was entered into the record—was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"And similar election integrity reforms have been upheld as constitutional by the United States Supreme Court [in CRAWFORD et al. v. MARION COUNTY ELECTION BOARD et al]," reads Van Hollen's statement.

Judge Flanagan addresses Van Hollen's nonsense stating:

The people of Wisconsin may choose to assure to themselves rights under their own constitution that differ or exceed those guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, State v. Doe, 78 Wis 2d 161, 172 (1977). The question of what is permitted and what is protected by the Wisconsin Constitution is the issue before this court and that issue was not before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Crawford case.

Van Hollen knows this fact. And the phenomenon, "integrity," does not manifest itself often in Van Hollen's Department of Justice.

War on Voting

Van Hollen would have Wisconsin's rights diminished if our rights exceed those guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

That he persists in his efforts to suppress non-Republican voters is simply more evidence of his corruption, echoing Van Hollen's 2008 efforts at voter suppression in which Van Hollen's similarly ridiculous effort was tossed out of court and into the GOP history's bin, the black hole.

In the 2008 case, (J B Van Hollen vs. Government Accountability Board (GAB) et al) Van Hollen tried to create a new Wisconsin constitutional standard to vote by fiat: A perfect match of the spelling of voters' names in state bureaucracies.

Several former judges serving on the GAB Board would have failed Van Hollen's new constitutional standard in 2008, and this GOP effort drew wide ridicule.

"Nothing in state or federal law requires that there be a data match as a prerequisite for a citizen's right to vote," Judge Maryann Sumi said in dismissing Van Hollen's lawsuit that tried to use the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as a voter suppression tool.

But our corrupt attorney general will not give up his Party's project of diminishing and denying the rights of Wisconsin citizens.